10 things you need to know today: October 8, 2019

(Image credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

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1. Democrats expand impeachment inquiry with Pentagon, Budget subpoenas
2. Trump wins stay after judge rules he must provide tax returns
3. Top Senate Republicans criticize Trump's Syria move
4. Democrats seek ways to keep Trump allies from identifying whistleblower
5. Cosmology, exoplanet researchers share Nobel physics prize
6. U.S. blacklists 28 Chinese tech firms as trade talks loom
7. Anti-Muslim group's gala canceled at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club
8. FBI confirms Little confession to being most prolific U.S. serial killer
9. China state TV suspends preseason-game broadcasts after Hong Kong tweet
10. Astronomers discover 20 new moons around Saturn

published 8 October 2019

1. Democrats expand impeachment inquiry with Pentagon, Budget subpoenas

House Democrats stepped up their impeachment inquiry on Monday by issuing subpoenas to the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget for documents on the decision to hold up aid to Ukraine. House Democrats had already demanded documents from the State Department, the White House, and President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for information on Trump's effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, now a Democratic presidential candidate, and Biden's son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. It was not immediately clear how the Trump administration would respond to the new subpoenas, although the State Department missed a Friday deadline to comply with the subpoena it received.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that President Trump can't legally keep his tax returns from New York prosecutors. Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan called Trump's claim his position makes him immune from criminal investigation "repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional values." Trump won a temporary delay of the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, meaning that Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, did not have to immediately hand over the requested eight years of Trump's returns while the appeals court reviews the case.

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Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and other prominent Republicans on Monday criticized President Trump's decision to move America's 1,000 troops in northeastern Syria out of the way ahead of a Turkish incursion into the area. The GOP senators said the move amounted to abandoning America's Kurdish allies who helped drive out ISIS. Turkey views the Kurds as a threat. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in a rare public disagreement with Trump, warned that "a precipitous withdrawal ... would only benefit Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime," and help ISIS regroup. Trump sought to reassure critics, tweeting Monday that he would "obliterate" the Turkish economy if Ankara did anything he considers "off limits."

House Democrats are considering taking extraordinary precautions to mask the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked an impeachment inquiry of President Trump, hoping that the measures will clear the way to getting the whistleblower to testify, The Washington Post reported Monday, citing three officials familiar with the discussions. Democrats reportedly are considering having the whistleblower testify remotely, and masking the person's appearance and voice so Trump's congressional allies can't expose the whistleblower's identity. Trump has attacked the person's credibility and said he should be able to know who the individual is. On Tuesday, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, will testify before the House Intelligence Committee about his role in trying to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded Tuesday to James Peebles, Michel Mayor, and Didier Queloz for "improving our understanding of evolution of universe and Earth's place in the cosmos." The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Peebles, a Princeton University professor, won half the $908,280 prize "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology," while Mayor and Queloz will receive the other half "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star." Peebles' theoretical framework has come to serve as the foundation for current understanding of the universe's history, The Guardian reported. Mayor and Queloz discovered the first planet outside our solar system in 1995.

The Commerce Department late Monday blacklisted 28 Chinese state security bureaus and tech companies for their alleged involvement in suppressing China's Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. The entities' inclusion on the Entity List bars U.S. companies from doing business with the Chinese firms. The filing accuses the agencies and some of China's top artificial intelligence companies of involvement in Beijing's "campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance" against the minority groups. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the U.S. "will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities in China." The move came as high-level U.S. and Chinese negotiators prepared to meet Thursday for talks on ending the two countries' trade war.

The anti-Muslim group ACT for America said Monday that the Trump Organization had abruptly canceled its planned gala at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. "Regrettably, the Trump attorneys in New York caved to the Left's bullying tactics and made a decision to cancel our event within hours," ACT said in a statement posted on Twitter. The organization's founder, Brigitte Gabriel, blamed only the company's lawyers, not Trump or his sons, who run the business. "While we are disappointed in the decision made by the Trump Organization's attorneys, we do not blame President Trump or the Trump family," Gabriel said, adding that her group would "continue to stand with President Trump." The Trump Organization did not immediately comment.

The FBI on Monday confirmed that its investigators had verified 50 of the 93 murders Samuel Little has confessed to committing over 35 years. He is now considered the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. Little, 79, was serving three consecutive life sentences in California when a Texas Ranger connected him to a 1994 cold case. The Ranger has been credited with getting Little to confess last year to strangling 93 women between 1970 and 2005. The FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program then started linking Little to one unsolved murder after another. Authorities believe the former boxer was able to avoid detection for so long by moving from city to city, and targeting vulnerable women, including sex workers and drug addicts.

Chinese state-run television network CCTV said Tuesday that it was suspending its broadcast deal with the NBA for preseason games. Tencent, which holds digital streaming rights in China for NBA games, said it was temporarily suspending preseason plans, too. The news came after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong. China objected strongly to the tweet, which has been deleted. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver defended Morey's "ability to exercise his freedom of expression." CCTV said it was "strongly dissatisfied" with Silver's remarks and would "immediately investigate all cooperation and exchanges involving the NBA."

Scientists from the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced on Monday that 20 new moons have been discovered around Saturn, bringing its total number of moons up to 82. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has 79 moons, including Ganymede, which is nearly half the size of Earth. Saturn's newly-found moons are all tiny, no bigger than three miles in diameter. "It was fun to find that Saturn is the true moon king," Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institute for Science, told The Associated Press. Sheppard said the moons were spotted this summer via a telescope in Hawaii, and it is believed there could be roughly 100 additional minuscule moons that have yet to be discovered.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.